Your Physical Assets Are Protected — What About Your Cyber Assets?

Companies are currently hard at work protecting 51% of their tangible property assets – but only 12% of their information technology assets, which are often just as valuable, according to the latest cyber impact report.

Aon’s 2015 Global Cyber Impact Report points to cyber as one of the biggest financial risks to companies, particularly with the rise in cloud computing, the Internet of Things, big data analytics and other recent IT trends, yet many companies are still slow to protect those assets.

Among the findings:

Half of respondents say their company would disclose loss of property, plant, and/or equipment in its financial statements – but 34% say losses of information assets would not require disclosure

52% believe their companies’ exposure to cyber risk will increase over the next two years, and

37% of those companies surveyed experienced a significantly disruptive data breach at least once in the last two years – with an average economic impact of $2.1 million.

One more reason to treat tech assets as carefully as their material counterparts? Use of internet-connected devices is projected to grow from 10 to 50 billion in the next five years.